THere are about 115 million households in the US. If it takes each household on average 5 minutes to change all of their clocks, that's 575 million minutes. Divide that by 60, that's about 9.6 million hours.

The average yearly wage in the US is about $43,000. If you figure a 40 hour work week, that's an average hourly wage of $20.67.

That means it costs the US about $396,923,077 in lost time just to change the clocks every year.

What I've just realized upon reading this is that, if "springing forward" costs the economy half a billion dollars, then the opposite must be true when we "fall back" (which makes sense because instead of losing an hour, we're gaining one). So, let's do this: we'll mandate that, for the next year or so, we'll "fall back" one more hour until the budget deficit is fixed. No need to get unreasonable about it...we can do one a week, for an economic gain of about $2 billion per month. $24 billion in a year, not too shabby. Yes, this will cause some havoc with people's schedules, but as Mr. Obama is so fond of saying, we've all got to sacrifice. We could even switch it up a bit and make the fallback 2 hours at a time, which would double our savings. We could be in a surplus situation in a couple of years.

And before you start poo-pooing the idea, I know what the major critique is. Yes, when all is said and done, we'd be a day or two, maybe 3 or 4, behind ourselves. That's fine..."days" are just a human concept, anyway. And once the economy was fixed and there was no more need to fall back for money, we could start springing forward again, a little at a time, until we were back to "normal." It's similar to time travel, really.

Hey, that's an idea...what if we could fall back enough to change past events? Like, maybe stop the recession before it happened? We could make a ton of money for the economy AND prevent economic collapse, so we'd be ahead on two fronts. I'm excited about this.

Babwa Wawa:I get really tired of people who think that DST is somehow the most pressing problem facing this country.

Here's why we will never get rid of DST shifts:

- If we shift forward all year long (DST all the time), daylight hours will be 8:15a-5:30p in much of the country. Small children waiting for the bus in the dark isn't tenable.

School children still have to wait for the bus in the dark. This has always seemed like the dumbest reasoning to me. In the meantime millions of people have to walk or drive home from work in the dark because the sun goes down so early.

Pocket Ninja:And before you start poo-pooing the idea, I know what the major critique is. Yes, when all is said and done, we'd be a day or two, maybe 3 or 4, behind ourselves. That's fine..."days" are just a human concept, anyway. And once the economy was fixed and there was no more need to fall back for money, we could start springing forward again, a little at a time, until we were back to "normal." It's similar to time travel, really.

You've brought up a good point: moving back and forth by hours isn't really any less arbitrary than moving back and forth by days. Days are just bigger than hours. But our deficit is big, so we've got to think big to solve it. Every second Saturday until football season starts, we should move the calendar back one day for "Daylight Savings Date". This will give us one extra productive day per week, which I estimate should be worth about $50 billion dollars. We can give the day back on Sunday morning, when we return to "Standard Date". This won't cost us anything, because no one does anything on Sunday anyway.

THere are about 115 million households in the US. If it takes each household on average 5 minutes to change all of their clocks, that's 575 million minutes. Divide that by 60, that's about 9.6 million hours.

The average yearly wage in the US is about $43,000. If you figure a 40 hour work week, that's an average hourly wage of $20.67.

That means it costs the US about $396,923,077 in lost time just to change the clocks every year.

That would only make sense if they were all at work when they changed their clocks.

A year is made up of 8,760 hours (365x24), so using your "logic", the average salary amortized over the entire year is $4.91 per hour. $47 million in imaginary "lost" productivity.

Of course, for someone like me who doesn't buy into the notion that your time off the clock is worth a plug nickel, the total lost productivity in daylight savings time is precisely zero.

Switching to Daylight Saving Time costs the American economy $434 million due to lost sleep, according tothe rocket surgeons at the Institute For Pulling Statistics Out Of Our Assespeople who don't have to get up in the morning and go to work.

Well given that I was late this morning because the change farked up my baby's schedule leading her to not sleep last night and in turn me not sleep I fully support abolishing this archaic and idiotic time change shiat.

I like the time as it is now, where it is light out later... it probably seems pointless to the very southern states but trust me, up in the north it is dark when you get out of work and it is a bummer...

stuhayes2010:Just imagine the loss if it happened during March Madness basketball.

We'd bankrupt the whole country!!! If you add in the time it takes to open cheap Chinese shiat that is inevitably packaged to waste at least 5 extra minutes of you life its a miracle we're not even MORE trillions of dollars in debt.

Every year, we read in the media that Benjamin Franklin first proposed DST. He did, of course, but the ill-educated media morons never say anything more about this, which tells me they know nothing of Franklin. Franklin was a master of the absurd argument and had keen and somewhat evil sense of humor. He would propose ridiculous things and support them with what first appear to be sound logic, but when taken on whole, become farcical. His proposal for DST was one of these. He never meant for it to be taken seriously. He was just farking with the stupid people of his day.

I usually spend about 5 minutes a day picking my nose, so I had to give that up yesterday in order to change the clocks that didn't adjust automatically. It was tough, but it did lead to extra good pickins today.

Every year, we read in the media that Benjamin Franklin first proposed DST. He did, of course, but the ill-educated media morons never say anything more about this, which tells me they know nothing of Franklin. Franklin was a master of the absurd argument and had keen and somewhat evil sense of humor. He would propose ridiculous things and support them with what first appear to be sound logic, but when taken on whole, become farcical. His proposal for DST was one of these. He never meant for it to be taken seriously. He was just farking with the stupid people of his day.

dittybopper:Do your wall clocks update automatically? Alarm clocks? What about your stove? Hell, even my relatively new (2 years old) TV needs to be told when to change.

Here are the list of clocks I have. DVR, alarm, cell phone, car stereo, computer. Other things that have clocks such as microwaves, stoves, or stereos I don't bother ever setting to begin with. I have no analog wall clocks.

dittybopper:Don't you think it's wasteful to get rid of things that still work simply because they aren't "new"?

No. I sell them to the less fortunate than me, then I go out and stimulate the economy by buying new. Its a win-win.

I don't understand people who claim to lose an hour of sleep (excluding those who work Saturday night andSunday morning) at the beginning of DST. It happens between Saturday and Sunday, the time when fewest people are working. If you go to bed at your regular time Saturday night (which is typically not a fixed time like during workdays) and sleep your normal number of hours, it will be an hour later when you wake, with no reduction in sleep. Then, on Sunday night, you go to bed at your regular time after being awake one hour less. Both nights you get your regular amount of sleep, but the day in between has one fewer hour of being awake. You have actually had an increase in sleep relative to your awake time.

Everyone's tired on Monday mornings. DST is just a scape goat to blame it on this time of year. I celebrate the lighter evenings and the sun not shining quite so early every morning.

isawyou:I don't understand people who claim to lose an hour of sleep (excluding those who work Saturday night andSunday morning) at the beginning of DST. It happens between Saturday and Sunday, the time when fewest people are working. If you go to bed at your regular time Saturday night (which is typically not a fixed time like during workdays) and sleep your normal number of hours, it will be an hour later when you wake, with no reduction in sleep. Then, on Sunday night, you go to bed at your regular time after being awake one hour less. Both nights you get your regular amount of sleep, but the day in between has one fewer hour of being awake. You have actually had an increase in sleep relative to your awake time.

Everyone's tired on Monday mornings. DST is just a scape goat to blame it on this time of year. I celebrate the lighter evenings and the sun not shining quite so early every morning.

Every year, we read in the media that Benjamin Franklin first proposed DST. He did, of course, but the ill-educated media morons never say anything more about this, which tells me they know nothing of Franklin. Franklin was a master of the absurd argument and had keen and somewhat evil sense of humor. He would propose ridiculous things and support them with what first appear to be sound logic, but when taken on whole, become farcical. His proposal for DST was one of these. He never meant for it to be taken seriously. He was just farking with the stupid people of his day.

So I shouldn't have slept with all of those old ladies?

He proposed it to save on expensive candles. And, once I succeed in my ascention to mad scientist/supervillain, I will ensure that the switch to daylight savings time costs at least $434 million if the people can't make it to that number naturally.

SuperChuck:You don't think there are any kids out waiting for the bus before 7:15am?

"Small" kids, no. Older kids, yeah.

When I was in Middle School/HS (so, starting around 6th grade, which would have made me around 11-12) I was the first one on the bus. Our school day started at 7:20 I believe, and I had an hour long bus ride, so that means that I was on the bust by at least 6:15....

Has Indiana weighed in yet?We only started observing daylight savings time a few years ago. It has really messed things up here. I mean the whole concept of DST is like cutting a foot off of a blanket at the bottom and sewing it to the top top make it longer.I liked it better when we were on the same time all year and had daylight much later.

No, I covered that in my other post. There is no need to have clocks in every appliance. Every house should have three. One when waking up, one in living room and one in the car. Keep a cell phone handy if you need to know the time on a whim.

Three cars in the driveway, all have a different system for changing the time:

My wife's Yaris you hold the clock button down until the minutes start blinking, wait ten seconds then the hour starts blinking, push the button immediately to change the hour, wait ten more secs for the hour to stop blinking. My Accord has dedicated hour and minutes buttons, no problem there. My daughter's Civic only has a clock in the aftermarket stereo, I think you recite a spell in Olde Elvish and it might change the time, or not.

Gifted Many Few:dittybopper: Do your wall clocks update automatically? Alarm clocks? What about your stove? Hell, even my relatively new (2 years old) TV needs to be told when to change.

Here are the list of clocks I have. DVR, alarm, cell phone, car stereo, computer. Other things that have clocks such as microwaves, stoves, or stereos I don't bother ever setting to begin with. I have no analog wall clocks.

I do have analog wall clocks. Know why? Because they always work, don't depend on infrastructure beyond a single AA battery, and an analog clock face is a much better intuitive visual representation of time than a digital display.

Though I wouldn't mind a nixie-tube digital clock like the ones we had in the Army.

dittybopper: Don't you think it's wasteful to get rid of things that still work simply because they aren't "new"?

No. I sell them to the less fortunate than me, then I go out and stimulate the economy by buying new. Its a win-win.

Meh. I prefer just to keep stuff until it loses its utility. If I can't fix it, that is.